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Steal This Research Paper! (You Already Paid for It.) | Mother Jones

This is an interesting read on the Open Access movement. Here’s the conclusion, with a quote from Michael Eisen that provides some food for thought.

In the end, his disdain isn’t directed at the publishers who hoard scientific knowledge so much as at his colleagues who let them get away with it. “One of the reasons advances in publishing don’t happen is that people are willing to live with all sorts of crap from journals in order to get the imprimatur the journal title has as a measure of the impact of their work,” Eisen says. “It’s easy to blame Elsevier, right? To think that there’s some big corporation that’s preventing scientists from doing the right thing. It’s just bullshit. Elsevier doesn’t prevent anyone from doing anything. Scientists do this themselves!”